Does Increasing Ethnic Representativeness Reduce Police Misconduct?

This article examines whether representative bureaucracy improves organizational integrity using evidence from English and Welsh police forces that implemented ambitious targets to increase the share of ethnic minority officers during 2000–2010. The evidence shows an association between an increase in police force ethnic minority representation and a subsequent reduction in police misconduct. An increase in representativeness is also shown to be associated with a decrease in the share of black complainants but not with a change in the ethnicity of those subject to complaints. This evidence suggests that diversifying a bureaucratic workforce to reflect the community it serves may effectively catalyze bureaucratic integrity. In turn, improved organizational integrity influences bureaucrats’ attitudes and behaviors toward minority citizens, resulting in greater satisfaction among minority constituents. Representative bureaucracy may be an effective internal means of controlling administrative power for the good of the citizenry.     

The times make a hero: Street-level policy entrepreneurship in major crisis responses in China

Street-level bureaucrats are often grassroots officials, and they are regarded as passive practitioners of policy with no authority to change policy or innovate, while policy entrepreneurs are usually high-level officials. Based on observations of China's responses to two national crises, this study found that the times do make a hero. When acting as innovative frontline technocrats, major transboundary crisis practitioners, and management savvy operators within the top-down bureaucracy, street-level bureaucrats can become policy entrepreneurs. To innovate and drive policy change, street-level policy entrepreneurs will adopt innovative strategies. They will make efficient use of their expertise and discretion, integrate various resources, strive for attention from superiors, consolidate their achievements, and expand their influence.     

Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Attitude toward Clients: A Study of Work Group Influence in the Dutch and Belgian Tax Administration

Abstract

Classic street-level bureaucracy literature has suggested that individual bureaucrats are shaped by their work group. Work group colleagues can impact how bureaucrats perceive clients and how they behave toward them. Building on theories of work group socialization, social representation, and social identification, we investigate if and how the attitude of individual street-level bureaucrats toward clients is shaped by the client-attitude of the bureaucrat’s work group colleagues. We also test whether this relation is dependent on conditions of attitudinal homogeneity and perceived cohesion of the work group. Results of a survey among street-level bureaucrats in the Dutch and Belgian tax administration (1245 respondents from 210 work groups) suggest that different mechanisms underlie the work group’s impact on the individual street-level bureaucrat in this specific attitude. The analysis furthermore reveals that work groups have a limited impact on the individual’s client-attitude. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Serving many masters: Public accountability in private policy implementation

In recent decades, the introduction of market principles has transformed public service delivery into a hybrid. However, little is known about how these changes are reflected in the attitudes of private implementing agents: The hybridization literature neglects individuals, and street‐level bureaucracy research has disregarded hybridization. This article extends Hupe and Hill's ( 2007 ) accountability regimes framework to introduce the market as an additional accountability regime alongside state, profession, and society. Using a configurational approach, the article explores how public and private food safety inspectors in Switzerland perceive the multiple norms for behavior stemming from their environment. Results suggest that the plural accountabilities of for‐profit street‐level bureaucrats can increase the dilemmas involved in their work. Under certain circumstances, for‐profit street‐level bureaucrats have particular difficulties reconciling rule pressure with market incentives and client demands. The extended accountability regimes framework fruitfully captures such dilemmas and helps identify suitable governance responses.     

Is Representation Enough? Racial Disparities in Levels of Force and Arrests by Police

The research in representative bureaucracy that examines the extent to which racial congruence impacts bureaucrats’ decisions is mixed. This study adds to this literature by examining the impact of representative bureaucracy on the level of force that police officers use and whether they make an arrest in use of force encounters, while taking into consideration key situational conditions. Using individual-level data from New Orleans to estimate this impact, the authors find that racial congruence and incongruence impact policing outcomes even in the presence of situational shortcuts that cue decision-making. The findings show that the benefits of representation are conditional on the outcome. Black officers are less likely to use higher levels of force on Black civilians. Yet both Black and White officers are less likely to arrest White civilians in use of force encounters. This suggests that interactions in which bureaucrats have less discretion (e.g., arrests) may offer limited opportunities for active representation.     

Representative Bureaucracy: A Lever to Enhance Social Equity,Coproduction, and Democracy

Scholars and practitioners have long questioned whether the race, ethnicity, and gender of public bureaucrats matter to the efficacy and legitimacy of public services. Representative bureaucracy theory and research provide a growing body of empirical evidence that it does. This article examines some of the rich scholarly work that has been generated on representative bureaucracy and its implications for practice. A significant aspect of recent research focuses on the notion of symbolic representation, whereby the mere existence of a passively represented bureaucracy can itself improve outcomes by influencing the attitudes and behaviors of clients, regardless of bureaucratic actions or results. This article is intended to help both students and public managers understand the importance of representativeness in public organizations for a broad spectrum of practices and goals, from the coproduction of services to democratic rule.     

The Role of the Public Manager: Loyalty,Autonomy or Advocacy?

It is argued that the role of the public bureaucracy must be analysed along at least two dimensions. One dimension concerns the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats, i.e. the possible conflict between political loyalty and autonomy. The other dimension concerns the relationship between citizens and bureaucracy, i.e. the possible conflict between openness towards citizens and bureaucratic closedness. With the aid of data from a survey of 407 agency heads in Norwegian municipalities, it was possible to group different bureaucrats along the two dimensions. Four categories emerged from the analysis; a political bureaucrat, an autonomous bureaucrat, the "classic" administrator and the "linking pin". An attempt to predict group membership was made using variables on the societal, organizational as well as individual levels. This attempt was only partially successful, indicating that there is a need for other independent variables to explain group membership.     

Perceptions of Discretion in Street-Level Public Service: Examining Administrative Governance in Romania

ABSTRACT

Street-level bureaucrats have long been seen as key figures in program and policy implementation, often occupying unique positions that encompass executive, legislative, and judicial functions. Osborne’s concept of the New Public Governance addresses concepts of policy implementation and interpretive activities that characterize street-level bureaucracy. Current understanding of street-level bureaucracy is, however, dominated by research focused on the United States and the United Kingdom, both of which demonstrate differences from countries in Eastern Europe. This study uses survey data to examine street-level bureaucracy in Romania, with attention to the determinants of bureaucratic perceptions of discretion. Results indicate that proactive personality, prosocial motivation, autonomy, job satisfaction, and years of experience are related to individual perceptions of discretionary latitude among front-line workers.     

Technical progress in bureaucracies

In this paper we raise the question whether in bureaucracies incentives are existing to implement technical progress into public goods production as it may be observed in the private sector. Therefore the well-known models of the theory of bureaucracy will be enhanced by technical progress modelled as process innovations. Depending on bureaucrats' preferences two results can be obtained: (a) If bureaucrats maximize their budget or if output or the classical production factors enter their utility function, R&D will be used efficiently due to cost reductions increasing the bureaucrats' budget or utility; (b) if bureaucrats prefer R&D as an end itself, they will use this factor like other factors by more than the efficient amount. In both cases an allocative inefficient output of the public good is produced. As a consequence society cannot benefit from gains by technical progress since net social welfare is appropriated totally by bureaucrats, even if it is increased by R&D-efforts.     

Slackers and Zealots: Civil Service, Policy Discretion, and Bureaucratic Expertise

We investigate how aspects of "civil service" systems of personnel management interact with bureaucratic discretion to create expert bureaucracies populated by policy-motivated agents. We construct a dynamic model in which bureaucrats may invest in (relationship-specific) policy expertise and may or may not be interested in policy choices per se. The legislature makes sequentially rational grants of discretion, which serve as incentives for expertise investment and continued service only for policy-motivated bureaucrats. Bureaucratic policy preferences and the legislature's agency problem vis-à-vis bureaucracies develop endogenously in the model. Bureaucratic expertise can be supported in equilibrium only at a cost of its politicization; "neutral competence" is inconsistent with strategic incentives of bureaucrats. We identify several conditions that support the development of an expert bureaucracy in equilibrium, including security of job tenure and control over policy issues for policy-motivated bureaucrats.     

Policy Positions of Bureaucrats at the Front Lines: Are They Susceptible to Strategic Communication?

It is well established that bureaucrats’ implementation of policies is influenced by their own policy positions, that is, their attitudes toward the given policies. However, what affects the policy positions of bureaucrats? This article focuses on whether the policy positions of bureaucrats at the front lines of government are susceptible to frames and cues embedded in communication. Based on the notion that bureaucrats often adhere to certain professional norms when developing their attitudes toward policies, the authors hypothesize that communication frames and cues that align policies with such norms move bureaucrats’ policy positions in favor of the policy. Results of four studies in European and American settings among mid‐ and street‐level bureaucrats show support for the hypothesized effect. They also show that aligning policies with dimensions outside professional norms is ineffective, possibly even producing opposite effects.     

Bureaucratic expertise,overconfidence, and policy choice

Classic theory on bureaucracy suggests that one primary source of bureaucratic power in public administration and the policy‐making process derives from bureaucratic issue‐specific expertise. Studies in psychology and behavioral economics suggest that experienced experts tend to be overconfident in estimating their expertise, but few researchers have examined whether experienced bureaucrats are prone to overconfidence and, if so, how overconfidence may correlate with their policy choice. Drawing on past theoretical and empirical literature, this study is the first to investigate these questions by using survey data collected from 579 officials in various agencies related to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Our analyses demonstrate that (a) the level of issue‐specific expertise perceived by individual bureaucrats is positively associated with their work experience/job relevance to climate change, (b) more experienced bureaucrats tend to be more overconfident in assessing their expertise, and (c) overconfidence, independently of sociodemographic characteristics, attitudinal factors and political ideology, correlates positively with bureaucrats’ risk‐taking policy choices.     

Race, Region, and Representative Bureaucracy

Scholars of representative bureaucracy have long been interested in the linkage between passive representation in public agencies and the pursuit of specific policies designed to benefit minority groups. Research in this area suggests that the structural characteristics of those organizations, the external political environment, and the perceptions of individual bureaucrats each help to facilitate that relationship. Work to date has not, however, sufficiently investigated the impact of region on representation behavior, which is surprising given the emphasis that it receives in the broader literature on race and politics. Drawing on that literature, this study argues that, for black bureaucrats, region of residence is an important moderator of active representation because it helps to determine the salience of race as an issue and the degree of identification with racial group interests. It tests hypotheses related to that general argument in a nationally representative sample of more than 3,000 public schools. The results suggest that black teachers produce greater benefits for black students in the South, relative to other regions. A supplementary analysis also confirms the theoretical supposition that race is a more salient issue for Southern black bureaucrats, when compared with their non-Southern counterparts.     

Influencing Policy at the Top of the Federal Bureaucracy: A Comparison of Career and Political Senior Executives

Although we commonly assume that bureaucrats influence the policies which govern public behavior, we know very little about the individuals who occupy executive positions in the federal bureaucracy. Following the creation of the Senior Executive Service (SES) in 1978, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) published guidelines detailing the skills and responsibilities required among both career and noncareer members of the SES. Although scholars have focused much attention on relations between these two groups within the federal bureaucracy, their day-to-day responsibilities remain understudied. This study reports results of a survey that was administered to 1,000 members of the Senior Executive Service to determine whether career and noncareer members of the SES have significantly different job responsibilities. Although both groups perform a variety of activities which provide them with numerous avenues to affect government policy, the research findings indicate that noncareer executives are more engaged in carrying out political liaison tasks and that career executives have slightly greater personnel responsibilities.     

Where Did the Bureaucrats Go? Role and Influence of the Public Bureaucracy in the Swedish and French Pension Reform Debate

This article has two key objectives. First, despite having been considered as a key element to favor the expansion and elaboration of the welfare state in industrial countries, bureaucrats have been largely ignored by the "New" Politics of the Welfare State. This article demonstrates that bureaucrats still matter in times of retrenchment, because they can facilitate or obstruct various phases of the policy process. The degree of independence of the bureaucracy vis-à-vis the government, the government's level of dependency and trust on public expertise, the locus of ministerial power, and political deadlocks contribute to either accentuate or decrease the influence of the bureaucracy in the retrenchment of social policies. Second, these elements are analyzed via a comparison of the pension reform processes in France and Sweden. This article argues that the French bureaucracy, despite its high degree of centralization and powers, has been far less successful than its Swedish counterpart. The Swedish institutional structure, the predominance of social ministries in pension affairs, and the trust given to an independent agency account for this puzzling outcome.     

Bureaucrats and Politicians in Britain

The distinctive relationship between bureaucrats and politicians in Britain has been much noted around the world and often used a model by reformers. However, both Conservative and Labour governments have displayed dissatisfaction with the bureaucracy and have made important changes in the "Whitehall model." Some of these changes have reduced the degree to which British politicians have been unusually dependent on a career bureaucracy that is insulated from partisan politics.     

Administrative reform in Haiti: Problems,progress and prospects

A growing awareness among officials in Haiti of the need for public service reforms has resulted in the reorganization and revitalization of the country's Administrative Reform Commission (Commission Administrative). At present there is no uniformity in organization, procedures, regulations or remuneration between the different government agencies. The bureaucrats have little security and the bureaucracy is completely dominated by the executive branch of government. Coupled with this, owing largely to the budgeting system, the public service has developed into virtually two separate services, one dealing with development and the other with recurrent tasks. The number of public servants has doubled in the past decade. The Administrative Reform Commission has identified its priorities including the creation of a unified career service system, a restructuring of the bureaucracy and decentralization. This article comments on the Commission's proposals and the problems of implementing them.     

The importance of discretion for welfare services to minorities: Examining workload and anti-immigration attitudes

Migration influx in Western countries resulting in increasingly diverse societies results in more complex situations for bureaucrats in their client interactions in welfare organizations. The role of discretion for services to clients has received much attention in the public administration research and therefore this study explores the relation among perceived workload, anti-immigration attitudes, perceived discretion, and perceived difficulty in working with migrants. The paper examines the function of perceived discretion as moderator or mediator variable in this constellation. The relations are examined by using structural equation modelling based on a survey among Swedish welfare bureaucrats (N = 1,319). The results show that heavier perceived workload increased the likelihood of experiencing work with migrants as difficult and that greater perceived discretion decreased the likelihood of experiencing work with migrants as difficult. The results suggest that perceived discretion functions as a mediator for the relation between perceived workload and difficulty in work with migrants: potentially functioning as a ‘buffer’ for organizational pressure. We also found that bureaucrats who hold negative attitudes towards migrants were more likely to express their work with migrants as more difficult. This paper contributes to the public administration literature by increasing our knowledge on how discretion has significance in relation to when bureaucrat's behaviour is determined by specific organizational and personal factors.     

政党整合下的官僚制行政——当代中国公共行政的组织行为分析

当代中国公共行政的基本模式是在中国共产党的领导下由官僚机构实行国家管理的结构.党是国家管理的核心.因此,党的组织行为方式明显地影响了官僚制行政的方式,具体来说使得公共行政表现为三方面的特征公共行政的政治化、意识形态色彩和人格化.这些特征在一定程度上造成了公共行政的失范和无序,党必须严格规范其行为,才能够保证官僚体系程序化、理性化和公正化的实施管理.     

Cooking the books: Bureaucratic politicization and policy knowledge

Accurate knowledge about societal conditions and public policies is an important public good in any polity, yet governments across the world differ dramatically in the extent to which they collect and publish such knowledge. This article develops and tests the argument that this variation to some extent can be traced to the degree of bureaucratic politicization in a polity. A politicized bureaucracy offers politicians greater opportunities to demand from bureaucrats—and raises incentives for bureaucrats to supply—public policy knowledge that is strategically biased or suppressed in a manner that benefits incumbents reputationally. Due to electoral competition, we suggest that the link between bureaucratic politicization and politicized policy knowledge will be stronger in democracies than in autocracies. A case analysis of Argentina's statistical agency lends credence to the underlying causal mechanism. Time‐series cross‐sectional analyses confirm the broader validity of the expectations and show that the relationship is present only in democracies.